CHINA: Security has been stepped up outside the Irish Embassy in Beijing as fears escalate that more North Korean refugees demanding asylum will attempt to target Western missions in China.
Barbed wire has been erected by Chinese security police around the Irish Embassy and most other embassies in the Chinese capital following the recent storming of missions by more than two dozen North Koreans demanding passage to South Korea or the US.
Extra paramilitary guards, some armed with sub-machineguns, were visible on embassy district streets yesterday. In the latest incidents, a man and a woman entered the Canadian embassy in Beijing on Sunday and three people entered the US consulate in the north-eastern city of Shenyang.
Meanwhile, tensions between China and Japan heightened yesterday as talks aimed at resolving a dispute over the arrest of five North Korean asylum-seekers in the Japanese consulate in Shenyang last Friday broke down.
Japan is claiming that Chinese paramilitary police entered its consulate grounds without permission and dragged the North Koreans out. Tokyo, which says the move was in breach of international conventions, is demanding that China hand the five asylum-seekers to the Japanese authorities.
Yesterday Japan said a humanitarian solution was Tokyo's first priority in resolving the dispute.
Talks in Beijing between diplomats from Japan and China ended with no agreement and no plans for further negotiations."The discussions didn't converge or they just went in parallel," a senior Japanese diplomat said.
"We requested the apology and humanitarian treatment and the assurance of a non-recurrence, but the Chinese side said they had no reason to apologise. And they rejected all the requests, especially in the case of the handover." The Japanese Foreign Minister, Ms Yoriko Kawaguchi, told the Japanese parliament that people should not be sent to countries where they "could be persecuted". The incident in Shenyang has strained Sino-Japanese ties as the two neighbours prepare to commemorate this year's 30th anniversary of the normalisation of relations.
Meanwhile, the three North Koreans who entered the US consulate in China last week seeking asylum were reported to have arrived in South Korea yesterday.